The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-12-17

OA A~Sp A~~kG - ward over the strange man who will be heard but will not be seen. Inside the inner ring there are gardens trim and pretty, though no especial pride is taken in anything outside the walls. The garden of his Isle of Wight house was more picturesquely ragged than elegantly ordered.
 Since he accepted Mir. Gladstone's peerage (though he will live as plain Alfred Tennyson) he has favored so- ciety with more of his presence if not of his graciousness. In return for his barony Tennyson gave one vote in the house of peers-it was his first, and soon after his elevation on Gladstone's side in extending the francnise-but ever since then his utterances and his sympathies have been in the opposite direction. Since the death of his fla vorite son, last year, he has been less it is unlikely he will return to it, even in the half- hearted way he did. Ten nyson bas his circle, small one, of intimates, and they are celebrities like himself For he is philosopher, 8 student of science. politics and art, and enjoys upholding his own dog matic views with the foremost apos- tie of each cult. He gathers a handful at time around him, and rare must be the talk that wings its way up the chimney, instead of recording itself for the delight of the humble world beyond the walls of Hazlemere.
 There is an old world flavor in the many cornered Gothic mansion whose gables and pinnacles stick out like quills upon the fretful porcupine." The interior is rich in its design and furnishing, the old blending with the new in poets "Locksley Hall." The welcome visitor knows the sincerity of his welcome if he is led along mysterious corridor into the sanctam sanctorum of the poet. Tennyson is now in his seventy eighth year, his locks are thinning fast and there are fewer dark ones than there were even three years ago, but his wonderfully noble eye has not lost its luster. Most likely he shifts clay pipe into his left hand that he may grip you with his right. This pipe is his calumet of peace, his secret charm for abstraction, his incense to the gods. At morn, at noon, at night, alone or accompanied, the pipe is his half way house between meals and the sure precursor of a nights repose. The Tennysonian cos- tune is seen st his best in here, and docs not seem so much an affectation. He thaws but slowly, even in his own room, but the magic of third pipeful sets wagging that masculine tongue and neither jawbone, and if the topic stirs him, he will pour forth fine rolling periods in the sturdy old English accents which modern super fine cockney schooling is polishing out of existence. AS the conversation warns, his puffs come fast and thick, and the sound of the pipe waxes more and more warlike. Not the bagpipes, nor the pipes of Pan, but the "church wardens," as we call the long clays, for Tennyson has lordly whim never to smoke the same pipe twice. When the charge is exhausted, he breaks the shank, drops it into cistern-like vase, anu HIS d CledH one IToHl tHe DOA sup- piled by his wholesale dealer.
 He reads and writes near window that commands view of the fine wood, and among those odorous trees he takes his listless strolls, sometimes condescending to give the villagers glimpse of his queer looking person. ality, but not when strangers are likely to be about.
 So lives the new patriarchal poet whose keen intellect whets its appe- tite by probing more deeply into the mysteries and movements of the age. His later productions seem to indicate half Respondent tone, perhaps the outcome of an old mans illness and deplorings over the strokes of fate. Rich, honored, courted, envied as he is, Tennyson knows, and keenly knows of late, the bitter side of life. His wife long invalided, his loved son dead, and his own now shattered health may well give his thoughts a more somber cast than when in younger days he sang so sweetly the songs of love and hope and abundant faith.- Correspondence San Francisco 1 Post.